Response to Braiding Sweetgrass

When I was a camper at Camp Newman we had a prayer that we used to perform after we ate that thanked God for literally every single aspect of the meal. We would even express gratitude for the table we ate off of. While reading about the Thanksgiving Prayer I couldn't help but be reminded of this moment that the whole camp would come together. What was interesting however is how much the prayer lost its meaning to most of the campers. We would bang on the tables and add funny phrases, warping the text to create our own version of this prayer of thankfulness.

Now that I think of it, this same ordeal happened to my morning ritual of saying the pledge of allegiance in elementary school. Ritual became obligatory and therefore boring. We weren't saying it because we wanted to. We were saying it because we had to.

I think Kimmerer's concept of making a more grateful world is a romantic idea, but it begets an important question. If everyone was so grateful wouldn't it create an almost disconnect between humans and their gratitude? What if this unconditional gratitude would deminish the actual gratitude someone could feel? It could warp our own idea of gratitude or even dilute it.

I think Kimmerer's idea is unrealistic. It's sweet to think about but the practicality is beyond what we as society are capable of.